EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

the international community colludes by permitting the country’s
wealth to be traded for weapons. Three and a half million Angolans
are displaced within their own country. New refugees arrive daily
in Zambia, Namibia and Congo. Southern Africa also has urban refugees,
now a phenomenon in most cities. Urban refugees are those
who lack access to other means of survival and refuse to live on
rations in a remote refugee camp. To earn a living they drift to the
cities anonymously.
In West Africa, civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone are supposedly
settled but flare periodically, leaving thousands of their citizens
in neighbouring countries, afraid to return.
Asia and the Middle East
The Palestinians in the Middle East and the Burmese ethnic minorities
in Thailand compete for the title of longest-lasting refugee
population. Both conflicts date from the 1940s. The conflict over
Kashmir dates from the partition of India and Pakistan, as does the
displacement of the so-called Bihari Muslims, an Urdu speaking
minority within Bangladesh. When the Soviet Union pressed down
into Afghanistan in 1979, a conflict started that has displaced millions
into Pakistan and Iran. Despite the withdrawal of the Soviet
Union and its own collapse, the violence hardly abated. China’s
occupation of Tibet and the existence of Tibetan refugees is well
known, thanks to their respected spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
Less known is the predicament of 100,000 Bhutanese, only marginally
less in number than the Tibetans, rendered stateless and confined
to camps in lowland Nepal for 10 years.
Sri Lanka meanwhile is the scene of one of today’s most poignant
conflicts, producing a worldwide diaspora that rivals the Sudanese.
None of those who fled wanted to leave home, but none could stay in
the face of pitiless violence. Seemingly ethnic based, the conflict is
(like so many others) about power and control. In southern India
100,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees live mostly in small camps. The
UN was asked to help but is denied access. India, together with most
Asian nations, still has not signed the 50-year-old UN Convention
guaranteeing protection to refugees.
Twenty-five years after the Vietnam War and the side-show conflicts
in Cambodia and Laos, the last Lao refugees have just returned
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